Jon, In the article (Circle Track March 2006) the cam they tested was out 4.8 ounce/inch out of balance when they were done it was .4 ounce/inch. You have worked at custom crank manufacturers,wouldn't this help?
I don't believe anything I read in those magazines since I made some claims about a carb entry I made when I was about 24 and they printed it as fact without checking anything. Also when I worked at Honda there were lot of articles about the engine we had specifying many details, almost all of them were wrong, not even close.
Would the balance change help? Probably not, do you know that if you remove weight from a the end counterweights of a V8 crank and make it out of balance that the bearing loads will be reduced? This is because the weight on the end CWs is oversize and offcenter to compensate for the other CWs being too small. It is not possible to determine how much from the information returned from the balancer. But there is a way to know from measurements.
The point is that just because something in dynamic balance doesn't vibrate, it doesn't mean anything to bearing loads or distortion of the shaft.
You can easily make a crank that doesn't vibrate that will pound your bearings to pieces. For example you could cut all the CWs off a crank and balance it with pieces added to the flywheel and balancer. It would be just as smooth as any crank but it will be very hard on the bearings.
Besides, think about it, what does 4 oz mean to a thin shaft that takes thousands of pounds load? Nothing.